How do I kill thugs with MA Caelum?

[DildoBaggins]

I was doing fairly well in a game until my rival sent in thugs with cold and lighting resistance and I started having trouble killing them or routing them. With EA Caelum I could try using skellispam but in MA Caelum you no longer have D2 path in your recruitable mages, any tips on how to deal with common thugs with this nation?

[AN]

Water elementals. If you have dwarven hammers you should slap water bracelets on your ice crafters and churn out bottles of living water, or if that's too far up in research right now then water lenses for the temp water gem

[DildoBaggins]

Originally posted by AN:

Water elementals. If you have dwarven hammers you should slap water bracelets on your ice crafters and churn out bottles of living water, or if that's too far up in research right now then water lenses for the temp water gem

Will if work even if they become Ice Elementals due to cold scales?

[AN]

Not if they're too big or have too much defence to trample

[TheMeInTeam]

There are a lot of "common" thugs, what specifically are they using? If it's not size 5 or 6 you could trample them with elementals or even mammoths.

If lightning or cold resist is there but not too high, things like tstrike and frozen heart will still do damage and if you send a group of mages can overpower 5-10 resistance. Very late game you get stuff like liquefy which goes against MR.

One thing he might not expect is that you get 20% fire random on seraphines. You can use phoenix power with a gem, and then use two more gems to summon a size 6 fire elemental per seraphine. If the thugs don't have fire resistance at all that will probably kill them.

Other than that, it depends on what other magic paths you've broken into and what your pretender is. Usually by years 3-5 you should have some other paths unlocked even if you took an awake expander. For example you can have searched death and used one empower + skull staff to break into stuff like mound fiends or spectral mages. Nature indies are still common in MA too, so you can do poison stuff.

[DildoBaggins]

The hardest to deal with was a size 6 huntress with 30 Lighting resistance, quickness and 25 Cold resistance I believe

[DildoBaggins]

It had regeneration as a bless

[TheMeInTeam]

What faction? I want to look at it in mod inspector. Stuff like other resists, MR, strength/damage, hp (to know regen), and more all matter in designing a counter.

[DildoBaggins]

Jotunheim

[Causk]

ideally you have access to banelords, probably via pretender or kokythiads, usually if a SC is already trample proof, cold and lightning resistant and regenerating, they wont have enough equipment to be resistant to the good old greatsword of sharpness (add boots of quickness and + attack items) or if they are heavily geared towards repelling, use a enchanted pike. Important part is catching them alone and adding in enough chaff/elementals/bugs, that the banelord has enough time to do his work.
Alternatively there are some magic resist spell that might work, most of them not easily accessible to MA Caelum, but on average you should be able to find some useable indie site mages that plug some holes in your magic path lineup. Soul Slay, Paralyse, Curse of the Frog Prince etc

[Perro Grande]

Depends fully on their thugs but usually thunderstrike kills most things.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally posted by GG WP:

Depends fully on their thugs but usually thunderstrike kills most things.

He's saying they have 30 shock resist and regen though. Tstrike on a high air mage can tickle that if it rolls well, but it won't kill it.

I'm not sure what a size 6 "huntress" is for MA Jotunheim though. The only size 6 thing unique to that nation is the Niefel Jarl.

Based on description I'm not seeing anything that would save them from a lot of poison or fire damage.

[Perro Grande]

Originally posted by TheMeInTeam:

Originally posted by GG WP:

Depends fully on their thugs but usually thunderstrike kills most things.

He's saying they have 30 shock resist and regen though. Tstrike on a high air mage can tickle that if it rolls well, but it won't kill it.

I'm not sure what a size 6 "huntress" is for MA Jotunheim though. The only size 6 thing unique to that nation is the Niefel Jarl.

Based on description I'm not seeing anything that would save them from a lot of poison or fire damage.

oh I just read down a bit, there is nothing you can do to kill it with water or air combat magic except for maybe water elementals which you won't be able to use anyways.

Best bet would probably be to research up to false horror and kill it by routing it into nothing. The phantom army spell is ok for 1 air gem to keep the thug busy while the false horrors fear it into routing. To actually do damage to it, you will probably need magical items.

Something else you have access to at construction 4 is the ranged 2h item visions foe which does armor negating damage and blinds the target. That item on someone buffed with air magic aim spell can probably force a rout of the thug along with the phantoms to act as chaff.

[TheMeInTeam]

^ Air magic has some summons that do poison damage, so if they don't have that you can jump them and slap enough poison damage to take them out.

MA Caelum has native fire access. Not much, but enough that if it's year 3+ putting some fire elementals on the field is a realistic expectation.

I didn't think about blinking them but that would be good too. Steal breath might be worth using too, would merit testing. Stacking a ton of fatigue on them could make a difference.

[DildoBaggins]

Originally posted by TheMeInTeam:

Originally posted by GG WP:

Depends fully on their thugs but usually thunderstrike kills most things.

He's saying they have 30 shock resist and regen though. Tstrike on a high air mage can tickle that if it rolls well, but it won't kill it.

I'm not sure what a size 6 "huntress" is for MA Jotunheim though. The only size 6 thing unique to that nation is the Niefel Jarl.

Based on description I'm not seeing anything that would save them from a lot of poison or fire damage.

Huntress is size 5 but casting enlarge so it gets to size 6

[DildoBaggins]

Thank you very much guys, very good answers :)